Category: Books

On Reading

March 6, 2009 /

I’m reading my first Stephen King book, On Writing. I’m paying perhaps more attention than usual to its prose style as I go, since I am trying to concurrently parse his advice and decide whether he is a writer from whom advice is to be solicited. So far its defining quality is that it’s straightforward: there’s none of the sidelong poetry you get from Atwood and Wolfe or the little inline games you get from Adams and Pratchett. He just writes what he writes, albeit (in blessed concordance with Orwell) free of tired figures of speech.

I determined all this last night in bed. I had intended to knock out a chapter or two, until my eyes got sleepy; when I finally closed the book, I noticed that I had read a hundred pages.

I’m starting to get it, Stephen King fans.

I didn’t read the title of the latter, I just kind of knew it

August 9, 2008 /

Like many people, I can’t read in dreams, but sometimes I really enjoy the things my brain comes up with to rationalize that. Like last night, when I stood in line for hours for the new Harry-Potter-analog book, finally got to the front and picked up my copy, and discovered that its cover text was in Cyrillic. “Of course,” I thought, “I think I remember hearing this one was in Russian.”

Then I glanced over and noticed a series of five John Bellairs books that I remembered enjoying in high school (including one called Whistle and Hum). I thought about finding them for a while after I woke up, until I realized they don’t exist.

Book news!

June 12, 2008 /

Item! After a last-minute sprint, I have now scribbled in and shipped out all the remaining personalized books that were ordered in May. This means that, despite a surprise spate of orders this week, I can finally announce that

Item! The Ommatidia Author Edition book is back in stock! Not that it seems to have stopped people from ordering anyway; I should have been resupplied weeks ago, but I’m not exactly getting them in bulk and the trickle of orders was consistently just enough to eat them up before I could edit the store page. Don’t think I am ungrateful, order-tricklers! I have invested your beautiful money by purchasing other people’s Lulu books, thus continuing the endless Circle of Paypal™. But this whole thing coincides neatly with

Item! The last Cosette story, which goes up online tomorrow morning and marks more than one sort of closure; I wrote it for the book two years ago, so it’s been languishing in the drafts folder for a very long time. Fans of the storyline might wish to reopen the wound today in preparation for its salting.

Oh, I almost forgot! Item! Don’t forget that the newest Hour of Knowledge went up yesterday, and that new ones will continue going up on all Wednesdays, forever. I won’t keep reminding you here every week, since the CHK has all kinds of its own feeds, including iTunes and LJ. But I will give you one last disclaimer: none of them are ever going to last an hour.

While Veronica rides the bubble

May 9, 2007 /

When you make a show about kids in high school, you are making a show about people who are almost always more clever, brave, and resourceful than any adult, but who are surrounded by authority that limits them, ostensibly in their best interest: teachers, parents, prurient laws and condescension. You are making a show about the struggle against that authority. You are making a show about the agency of disenfranchised people.

And that’s why it’s so hard, and maybe impossible, to make the leap to college–the conflict is gone. Despite some nice moments, Veronica Mars hasn’t handled it well, and my understanding is that Buffy couldn’t either. Let’s not get into Dawson’s Creek. Even Six Feet Under had to keep Claire off campus except for (apparently) one class. And this is the same logic that started killing Scrubs: once JD, Turk and Elliot became residents and gained some authority of their own, the show began drifting from drama-with-jokes-in toward straight comedy.

I’m afraid for the last Harry Potter book, if he really doesn’t go back to Hogwarts.

“This offer is not connected to posting our site on your blog but we will be very happy if you will write about us!”

November 28, 2006 /

I got some pretty neat spam today: Booksprice.com offered me a free copy of either Snow or My Name is Red by, er, “Price Nobel Winner Orhan Pamuk” in exchange (except not in exchange; see above) for my blogging about their site. Not a bad deal. I’m guessing they found me through Technorati–anyone else receive similar email?

The other way they might have found me is that I’ve written about Bookfinder before, and it’s sitting right on Booksprice’s target market. I tested both services against my go-to out-of-print book, Orson Scott Card’s Maps in a Mirror: Booksprice’s results returned a little faster, but it found only copies of the reissued paperback from a few years ago, whereas Bookfinder found multiple copies of the original hardback at comparable prices. Winner: Bookfinder!

On the other hand, Booksprice calculates shipping for you, and it also looks for used CDs, DVDs and video games. Pretty tempting. I doubt it’ll find anything cheaper than the best price you could get on eBay, but it’s probably less hassle.

I’m not interested in either of the books they offered, but I’ve done my part and I’d be happy to give one of them away. If you are interested, shoot me an email and I’ll either give them your address or give them mine and pass the book on to you.

This is the first time I’ve actually been offered goods (or money, or services) for PageRank. I’m on the A-list now! I will take my free convention passes in pairs, please.

October 12, 2006 /

“I walk with you, please,” he says, drawing even with her and smiling, as if delighted to offer her this favor. “My name is Voytek Biroshak.”

“Call me Ishmael,” she says, walking on.

“A girl’s name?” Eager and doglike beside her. Some species of weird nerd innocence that somehow she accepts.

“No. It’s Cayce.”

“Case?”

The standard criticism of William Gibson is that he’s spent twenty years writing the same story. Fair enough. But now I’m finally getting around to Pattern Recognition and remembering that I don’t care; the reason I go back to his books is their startling immunity to scansion.

I imitate the voices of a number of writers, particularly Margaret Atwood, Douglas Adams, Ellen Raskin, Rebecca Borgstrom and Neil Gaiman. I can get away with it most of the time (well, maybe not Borgstrom), but at a higher level, the whole desire to write microfiction is an attempt to shadow Gibson. I try to achieve, for a hundred words, the density he maintains for hundreds of pages.

That story Gibson keeps writing–the one about transcendence through technology–usually fails the Zafris test: its climax involves some nebulous achievement on a computer. Even if it is stereotypical, though, he always avoids making it trite. Orwell said never to use things in ways you’ve seen before. Gibson, appropriately, always finds his own uses for things.

August 22, 2006 /

It occurred to me last night that yes, they must be getting ready to make a The Dark is Rising movie, and sure enough. Aside from the two attached names so far, I’m concerned that Ian McKellen already appears to be doing three movies next year. That doesn’t leave a lot of spare time, and come on, can you even conceive of anyone else playing Merriman?